The roofs of eight homes in Penal blew off or were damaged over the past four days due to strong winds.
The incidents prompted Penal/Debe Regional Corporation chairman Gowtam Maharaj to urge residents to secure their properties as best as possible to minimise further loss.
His advice came after back-to-back strong winds and adverse weather Yellow Alerts over the last few days. Noting that five roofs were blown off at Sunrees Road, two at Gopie Trace, and one at Laltoo Trace, he said the Disaster Management Unit team has been responding expeditiously, providing immediate relief supplies, such as tarpaulins, mattresses, drinking water, and food items where necessary. He added that they were liaising closely with the Ministry of Social Development and have been receiving a “speedy response.”
“The usual in these areas is that you batten up a little stronger, you look at your weak rafters or your weak galvanize, put a little loading on it or nail it down. The long-term advice would be, in preparing for the varying weather conditions we are having now, a little bit of strengthening in terms of eaves and how we tie the superstructure to the roof and the ground structure,” he advised residents.
Maharaj assured, however, that the corporation is prepared and ready to deal with any weather-related incidents quickly. “Our councillors are on the ground, so we are really in tune.” One affected resident, Lisa Sahadeo-Singh explained that around 1 pm on Monday, she was in the kitchen preparing a meal for her daughter when she heard the galvanised sheets flapping.
She said, “We say let we go outside and see because we accustomed to the galvanise flapping. When we went outside the whole roof just rip off half the house and fly across by the neighbour.”
Sahadeo-Singh said she ran back into the house, grabbed her two children, 15 and 11, and ran to the back of the house to alert her father.
Fourteen family members live in the house, including seven adults and seven children, but four adults and two children were home on Monday. She said they were able to repair the roof around 7 pm, but work continued yesterday as they tried to reinforce the structure.
However, Sahadeo-Singh was still concerned, “We hardly sleep last night because I was thinking that we hear about the hard wind and (sic) fraiding to sleep last night. Next thing this roof come back down again.” She said their fan, mattress, school bags, books, furniture, and clothes were soaked.
